Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[bongodriver]

In a nutshell Winny, the Spit was neutrally stable longitudinally, this is an undisputed fact, in very basic terms this means it was very light on the controls in pitch, this basically means the pilot needed very little (only 2 fingers) effort to pitch the aircraft, the other benefit of this is it means the aircraft is very manouverable in the pitch plane too, hence why the Spit was so good at turning, the down side to highly sensitive pitch is the aircraft can be overstressed if used harshly at high speeds and may also mean the aircraft can be stalled very easily too, what this doesn't account for is the fact that despite how the Spit looks on paper all the potentially negative issues never really manifested and the Spit ended up with a reputation of being a 'delight' by the people whose oppinions 'really' count i.e. the pilots, who it turns out were largely not so 'ham fisted' and were able to use sensory feedback to allow the airframe to 'talk' to them and use the effect to it's limits, what Crumpp would like to see is the Spit being 'unforgiving' and basically discourage all of us to use this effect because NACA said it was a problem therefore he canno't accept the truth (we have all seen how resistant he is to hard evidence), it's purely coincidental that this would further pork the Spitfire